Sinomenine Purification by Continuous Liquid-Liquid Extraction Process with Centrifugal Extractors

Continuous manufacturing is considered as one of the future trends of pharmaceutical engineering. In this work, continuous liquid-liquid extraction for sinomenine purification was realized with the usage of centrifugal extractors. Chloroform was used as the extractant because of the high distribution coefficient (>100). Higher extraction ratio can be obtained when using the centrifugal extractor of Model CWL50-N. The extraction ratio of the second-stage extraction was higher than that of the first-stage extraction. The extraction ratio of the second-stage countercurrent extraction was higher than that of second-stage cross-flow extraction. When chloroform phase was recycled for liquid-liquid extraction, the extraction ratio was also higher than 95%. This work can also be an example of continuous liquid-liquid extraction for the separation of other Chinese medicine components.


Introduction
Sinomenii Caulis is the dried cane of Sinomenium acutum (Thunb.) Rehd. et Wils. or Sinomenium acutum (Thunb.) Rehd.et Wils. var. cinereum Rehd. et Wils. [1]. As the main active ingredient of Sinomenii Caulis, sinomenine possesses the effects of removing wind and dehumidification, promoting blood circulation, diuresis and swelling [1]. Its boiling point is 513.6˚C at 760 mmHg and Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science melting point is 161˚C. In industry, sinomenine hydrochloride is produced using the processes of percolation, filtration, pH adjustment, liquid-liquid extraction, concentration, crystallization and so on. Among them, liquid-liquid extraction is one of the critical processes, which can remarkably remove impurities and improve sinomenine purity. Sinomenine can be purified with salting-out extraction and reversed micellar extraction [2] [3]. However, liquid-liquid extraction is commonly carried out in a stirring tank in industry using chloroform as the extractant at present. The equipment is simple, but the liquid-liquid phase separation time is usually longer than 24 h, resulting in low production efficiency.
Pharmaceutical continuous manufacturing refers to the process in which materials continuously enter the pharmaceutical system, and drug products continuously come out of it [4]. It is considered as one of the pharmaceutical emerging technologies [5]. Compared with batch manufacturing, continuous manufacturing can improve pharmaceutical manufacturing by using an integrated process with fewer steps and shorter processing times; enabling real-time product quality monitoring; and providing flexible operation to allow scale-up, and scale-down to accommodate changing supply demands [5] [6]. Adamo et al. developed a reconfigurable drug manufacturing platform, in which the continuous manufacturing technology was also used [7]. In 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the "Quality Considerations for Continuous Manufacturing Guidance for Industry (DRAFT GUIDANCE)", which pointed out the considerations on process control strategy on continuous manufacturing of drugs [6].
At present, there are many published works on the continuous manufacturing of chemical drugs, involving different unit operations, such as synthesis [8], drying [9], and tableting [10]. Because of the lack of continuous manufacturing equipment and regulatory restrictions, there are relatively fewer reports on the continuous manufacturing of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs). Due to the advantages of continuous manufacturing, new equipment suitable for TCM production was developed and investigated. The works on continuous countercurrent leaching of herbal materials [11] and continuous vacuum belt drying [12] can be found in literatures. Recently, the authors used a micromixer to continuously adding ethanol solution to TCM concentrate [13], which effectively intensified the mixing of ethanol precipitation process and reduced the coating loss [14]. However, there is no published work on the continuous liquid-liquid extraction process of TCMs.
In this work, chloroform was used as the extractant to purify Sinomenii Caulis extract. Centrifugal extractors were applied to realize a continuous liquid-liquid extraction process. Different models of centrifugal extractors were compared.
The mode of liquid-liquid extraction was also optimized.

Preparation of Feed Solution for Liquid-Liquid Extraction
The medicinal herbs of Sinomenii Caulis were pulverized and percolated with 0.3 mol/L hydrochloric acid solution. The percolating solution was collected.
Calcium hydroxide was used to adjust the pH value of the percolating solution to 11 -12. After filtration, the filtrate was collected. Hydrochloric acid was used to adjust the filtrate to a pH value of 8.5 to obtain the feed solution for liquid-liquid extraction.

Batch Extraction
40 mL of the feed solution and 20 mL of chloroform were put into a separatory funnel. The separatory funnel was vigorously shaken to mix the two phases. After standing for the separation of two phases, the chloroform phase sample was collected. Then, 10 mL of chloroform was put into a separatory funnel. After full extraction, the chloroform phase sample and aqueous phase sample were collected. The content of sinomenine was determined by HPLC analysis.

Determination of Sinomenine Concentration
The concentration of sinomenine was determined with a high-performance liq- After that, the dry matter was dissolved with 0.01 mol/L hydrochloric acid solution, and diluted in a 100 mL volumetric flask before HPLC analysis.
Chromatograms are shown in Figure 5. By comparing Figure 5

Distribution Coefficient of Sinomenine
Equation (1) was the distribution coefficient of sinomenine.  Table 1. Distribution coefficient values are very high (>100), which indicates that chloroform can enrich sinomenine from low concentration aqueous solution.

Comparison of Liquid-Liquid Extraction Mode and Centrifugal Extractors
Different liquid-liquid extraction modes and different models of centrifugal extractors were used to extract sinomenine in the feed solution. Assuming that the volume of the aqueous phase did not change before and after liquid-liquid extraction, the extraction ratio was calculated with Equation (2).
1 100% R-Extraction ratio r-Raffinate f-Feed solution The extraction ratio values are listed in Table 2.
In Table 2, from the comparison of E2 and E3, E4 and E5, it can be concluded that CWL50-N centrifugal extractor performed higher extraction efficiency. The reason may be that the power of CWL50-N centrifugal extractor was higher, and the performance of liquid-liquid two-phase mixing and phase separation was better. The advantage of the CWL50-M centrifugal extractor was energy saving.
In Experiment E1, after two batch extraction, the extraction ratio was 99.5%, Comparing the results of Experiments E2, E4, and E6, it can be seen that the performance of the second-stage extraction was better than that of the single-stage extraction. Compared E4 with E6, the extraction ratio of second-stage countercurrent extraction was higher than that of second-stage cross-flow extraction. At the same extraction ratio, the two-stage countercurrent extraction will consume less pipeline and extractant amount. Accordingly, two-stage countercurrent extraction is favored.
The liquid-liquid extraction mode of the two-stage countercurrent extraction with chloroform phase recycled was also investigated. The results are shown in Table 3. When the recycling time of chloroform phase was from 5 min to 30 min, the concentration of sinomenine in the raffinate remains unchanged, which was between 0.15 -0.18 mg/mL. The extraction ratio values were all higher than 95%. It means that although chloroform phase was recycled, it can still achieve a high extraction ratio due to the large distribution coefficient of sinomenine.

Conclusion
In this work, chloroform was found to be an extractant with large distribution coefficient for sinomenine extraction. Continuous liquid-liquid extraction can be realized when using a centrifugal extractor. The result of two-stage extraction was better than that of single-stage extraction. The efficiency of two-stage countercurrent extraction was higher than that of two-stage cross-flow extraction.
The extraction ratio of CWL50-N centrifugal extractor was higher under similar extraction conditions. Continuous liquid-liquid extraction process is promising to be a critical part of continuous production of sinomenine hydrochloride. The results in this work can also be a reference for the continuous extraction process of other Chinese medicine products.